News & Research

Yoga Works

07/16/2012

RISD
students always seem to be searching for ways to relieve the build-up of stress
that’s synonymous with studio-based learning. Some practice martial arts while
others opt for weightlifting or running. And a growing number of students are turning
to the ancient art of yoga to center themselves after critiques and align
postures thrown out of whack from long hours spent hunched over workbenches. Yoga
is offered at RISD through classes at the Catanzaro Student Center and through
the student-run club RISD Yogis.

Since
1997 Donna Nassa has taught classes
in Bikram yoga – a form of hot yoga – at RISD. Under her watchful eye, students
meet twice a week to bend and twist their bodies in a mirrored room brimming
with space heaters. As someone who also teaches at her own studio in Cranston, RI,
she finds RISD students’ approach to yoga refreshing and unique.

“Art
students appreciate yoga in a way that engineers and math majors find only
later in their lives,” Nassa says. “It stimulates your creativity, so students
leave revitalized and excited to get to work.”

Participants in RISD Yogis don’t practice in front
of a mirror, but rather, when the weather permits, outside on the grass. A free,
student-run yoga club, RISD Yogis is headed by Alice Glassier13 PT and
Eric Estenzo 13 ID/IL. Students are
taught either Hatha or Kundalini yoga on Saturday afternoons by their peers, who
are trained yoga instructors. Despite differences in their practices, both Nassa
and Estenzo believe that yoga really helps open the mental floodgates.

“Yoga opens up opportunities for creating,” Estenzo
says. “Physiologically, mentally and spiritually, it allows you to access
yourself and let the creativity flow much easier.”

Even
students who don’t participate in either of these groups may find themselves
practicing yoga during class time. Professor Chris Bertoni incorporates yoga into her Foundation
Studies Spatial Dynamics class, asking students to take a
break from work to pause, center themselves and bond with their classmates. Chloe Dorgan 15 PT explains her
experience with in-class yoga: “We are dealing with space, volume, shape and
material. How could we erase our own [forms] from the equation? Our [bodies]
are vital to the creation of 3D work, as we revolve in space and around the
objects we create. So tuning in and tending to those bodies is a very important
part of being an artist.”

Whether
students seek out yoga in their free time or it’s presented as part of the
classroom experience, most agree that the experience makes them better people
and artists, and that they benefit from stress relief, the loosened flow of
creativity and better physical alignment and strength. The fact that a growing number
of students actually clear their schedules a few nights a week for practice confirms
its benefits. “RISD
students have a lot more on their plates than most people, who can go home and
have dinner after class,” Nassa says. “But you guys can’t. You’re right off to
studio.” And it’s precisely this difference that makes yoga so valuable.